


Dream a little dream of me

by thisisamadhouse



Series: In every universe you and I are soulmates [6]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Violence, Missing Year (Once Upon a Time), The Enchanted Forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 15:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14084313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisamadhouse/pseuds/thisisamadhouse
Summary: For the OQPrompt Party: my take on #51  Person A keeps having strange dreams that turn out to be OQ in a past/alternate lives and they’re determined to find person B again.





	Dream a little dream of me

There is a beautiful girl with hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood, skin golden like the shining sun. A young Robin sees her in his dreams every night, and he closes his eyes at the end of each day in hope of seeing her smile,. He doesn’t know her name, he doesn’t even know if she is real, but he does know that she is happiest when her father twirls her around and helps her saddle her pony for a trek. He knows that her mother has a cruel hand and a sharp tongue, and he has wanted to wipe away the tears from her face many times, but he is nothing more than a ghost in her world, invisible to all and most of all her. 

 

There is a charming boy with hair the colour of the sand and eyes as blue as a clear sky, when he smiles dimples crease his cheeks, and Regina, all of eight years old, fights a blush each time she sees it happening, even if it’s all a dream and he will never see her flushed in embarrassment. The boy is sweet and considerate of all of those living under his family’s roof, but his father isn’t, he has a heavy hand and a brutal nature, and both the boy and his mother bear the marks of it, though they try to hide them. Regina wishes there was something she could do to help him and heal his wounds, but she is not really there, and each morning she has to wake up to face her own harsh reality.

 

The girl has just turned sixteen, and she is a gifted rider. Robin never thought she could look more magnificent, but that was before he saw her pass by at full gallop, her braided hair flying back in the wind, her face glowing with excitement. Can one fall in love with a nighttime apparition? Robin wonders. There is another who is as captivated as he is, a stable boy who waits for her at the top of a hill for a few stolen moments each day. Robin longs so much to be the one holding her and kissing her lips that some nights he can actually see through the other man’s eyes, and that is when the mouth that isn’t really is speaks her name for him to hear: ‘Regina’, and it fits her so well that Robin feels like he should have known all along. She does look like a Queen. Those few hours with her help him get through his days, until her world turns even darker than his. Her mother is a witch with high ambitions, and a stable boy as a son-in-law isn’t among them. When she rips the man’s heart out, Robin wakes up with a jump, the pain in his chest excruciating. It takes him long moments to calm down and realize that his heart is still safely in his rib cage.

 

The boy has grown, he is seventeen and strong, more of a man than a boy really, skilled with a bow and arrow, but his father is never satisfied, and he and his mother keep paying the price. Regina watches as they spend days locked away, and she knows all too well how it feels, she has her own gilded cage now. She also has found out that she has powers she never suspected, and she wonders if they can be of use. She succeeds in possessing the mind of a young servant and she makes her free them, and the next night the boy is gone, but the servant is beaten up so badly that Regina can feel her agony through her own bones, and she is horrified that she caused this. She loses sleep for days afterwards.

 

The girl is a girl no longer, she is a Queen, a lonely, sad Queen, ignored and only paraded around when it is most convenient, and Robin clenches his fists in fury each time he sees the old fart she had to marry touch her. He also sees how she fights back, in her own way, with magic lessons from the Dark One, and he doesn’t know how to feel about that. He has always believed that magic only leads to trouble, and with her own mother using it so viciously he doesn’t understand why she would choose this way. Desperation probably. If he hadn’t found good friends in the forest, he can’t guarantee that he wouldn’t have taken a similar dark path. There is nothing he can do to help her, he doesn’t even know where she is, and it kills him slowly. The connection weakens over the years, though the feelings never disappear.

 

The man has made a life for himself, far from his family, a good life, and she is so tainted by darkness now that she fears that she would affect everything he has build for himself if she lingers. Sleep is so fitful these days that it soon becomes a nonissue.

 

His life is in a loop, though he isn’t aware of it for twenty eight years, but he still can see her sometimes, snippets of joyful moments -too few of those- and painful ones, but it’s fuzzy, as if she is too far beyond his reach. 

 

There is no magic in Storybrooke, but the town has been created with it, and occasionally, when she lets herself relax completely, she dreams of him. There is a boy with him, just like there is a boy with her, but his doesn’t grow, he remains perpetually four, and she knows, before Emma and Snow White ever confirms it, that the Enchanted Forest still stands, and he is there. 

 

There is a beautiful woman falling from the sky, with hair as black as ebony and the cape she is wrapped in, lips as red as the blood oozing from the deep scratches on her arm, inflicted by the beast he has just shot down, and skin clammy and cold as he finally gathers her crumpled form in his arms.

 

“It’s you,” he says, and those around them exchange astounded looks. “It’s really you.”

 

There is a man with hair the color of the sand Henry loved to play with when he was little, and eyes as blue as a clear sky, he is holding her, and she isn’t dreaming, because the pain from her various broken bones is too intense not to be real. She knows his name, and given the reverent expression on his face, he knows her too.

 

“It’s always been you,” she mumbles, and for the first time since she has been back in this godforsaken place, she hopes that she will survive.


End file.
